Remaining BS4 stocks are very high for Hero MotoCorp and Honda whereas most other big makers are close to exhaustion, according to a report…
Supreme Court of India in 2018 announced that the cut-off date for the sale and registration of Bharat Stage 4 compliant vehicles will be 31st March 2020. After that no BS4 vehicle will be allowed to be sold and all makers will have to sell only the more stringent Bharat Stage 6 compliant cars and two-wheelers. That is a significant amount of time given to everyone to upgrade and get ready for this transition.
Now, when we are in the absolute last month before the deadline, the pandemic COVID-19 has struck India and as a precautionary measure the central Government has announced a 21 day deadlock wherein every citizen has to remain indoors and only the very essential services are functional.
Few manufacturers like Hero MotoCorp along with Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations (FADA) knocked SC multiple times for an extension in the deadline since they can not sell the remaining stock during these days. After turning them down earlier, the top court of the country allowed them to sell some of their stock for 10 days after the lockdown. Here are more details and conditions.
Bajaj has been aggressively opposing the move and an analysis report by India Equity Research forecasts that makers will be down by almost half in March 2020 (projected numbers here). It further informs that based on their channel check indicators, Hero and Honda are left with a significant BS4 stock of about 1-2 weeks. Whereas Bajaj, TVS and Royal Enfield have exhausted most of their stocks.
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Rajiv Bajaj, MD of Bajaj Auto, earlier blamed the management of makers soliciting extension in sales (Hero & others) and he even went onto call them ‘greedy’. He charged that these makers continued to produce BS4 vehicles even till late February 2020 even after knowing that it will be difficult to liquidate this stock. In the same interview, he revealed that Bajaj is left with very minimal stock of BS4 motorcycles and was confident of exhausting it within the stipulated timelines.
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Royal Enfield, on the other hand, has already officially announced that it has exhausted BS4 stock completely and its dealerships are only selling BS6 motorcycles from 21st March 2020.
